Since the late 1980s, television audience measurement has become considerably more sophisticated. Thanks to the development of technological tools, it is no longer necessary to rely on studies based on individuals' declarations, which had been the basis for audience measurement until then.
See also: How are television audiences measured? Episode 1: Declarative measurements
This new technology, known as people meters, has led to significant advances by improving the quality of the data collected and increasing the range of analysis options available to television channels and advertisers.
What are people meters?
Audimetry is a system for measuring television viewing in the home that requires an audimeter, a small device that is connected to the television and measures the status of the television
at all times: is it on or off, is it being used to play games, to watch a DVD, to listen to a television channel, etc.?
The device measures the different viewing sessions in the household down to the second, throughout the day and without any human intervention.
However, while the audimeter provides extremely accurate results on how the television is used in the household, it does not provide information on the behavior of the people in the household, who is watching television and when.
This is why it is necessary to supplement the audimeter with a remote control
connected to the audimeter, allowing household members to identify themselves when they watch television (definition of audience in Germany or Belgium) or when they enter a room where a television is on (definition of audience in France).
Every night, the individual data collected on the audience meters is sent to the processing center, which analyzes and formats it to provide audience results to all subscribers by 9 a.m.
What is the collection methodology?
Given the complexity and cost of installing the devices and the subscribers' requirement to have audience measurements published daily, the information is collected from a panel
.
This representative sample of the population is equipped with an audimeter and a remote control. All individuals in the recruited households participate in the study on an ongoing basis
: once the panel has been formed, it is the behavior of the same individuals that is measured over time.
To avoid potential bias, the panels are completely renewed every five years: each year, 20% of households leave the panel voluntarily (due to moving, fatigue, death, etc.) or involuntarily (panelists who have been in the panel for too long, failure to follow instructions, etc.).
The information collected using this type of methodology has a number of advantages over self-reported data.
It does not rely on people's memory and does not generate bias related to the image of the programs.
It provides results quickly (overnight) and allows the behavior of a group of individuals to be tracked over time.
It facilitates the measurement of coverage and repetition, key indicators of an advertising campaign that are complex to calculate from non-permanent studies.
Its main disadvantage, which has become more pronounced over time, is that audience measurement does not take into account out-of-home audiences or in-home audiences on other screens (smartphones, tablets, computers/
Tomorrow is already here: the first steps toward automatic measurement
This is why, with the acceleration of multi-screen and out-of-home consumption, new techniques have emerged that aim to measure the audience of a channel or program automatically, everywhere and on all screens.
This is automatic measurement or passive audience measurement, which we will discuss shortly.
To be continued…